


an introduction to the art of scrapbooking

by Splashattack



Series: Wilde Week 2020 [2]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: A Wilde Week 2020 (Rusty Quill Gaming), Angst, Diary/Journal, Everyone is Dead, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, no beta we do like the Romans and DIE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27739348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splashattack/pseuds/Splashattack
Summary: He hadn’t expected to be the only one to survive‒but hehadbeen prepared for it.written for day two of wilde week.hmmm what if everyone but wilde died wouldn't that be neat
Relationships: Azu & Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming), Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom & Oscar Wilde, Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam & Oscar Wilde, Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Oscar Wilde, Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde, The London and Other London Outstanding Mercenary Group | LOLOMG & Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith & Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Series: Wilde Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029099
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23
Collections: A Wilde Week 2020





	an introduction to the art of scrapbooking

**Author's Note:**

> day two: remembering/forgetting/recording
> 
> lots of angst in this one... and some background zoscar because I can't have them in the same fic without shipping them it would seem

There are two horrible truths Wilde has come to accept in his life: people die, and memory is _painfully_ fallible. He’s a logical person: he knew it was more likely than not that someone he cared about would die before this was all over, and his traitorous mind would slowly but surely forget them until only a name remained.

He hadn’t expected to be the only one to survive‒but he _had_ been prepared for it.

Wilde was, at heart, a writer. Hidden among manuscripts and novels, buried beneath letters and lists, was his solution: a worn, leather-bound journal, stained with tea and tears, loose photographs between the loved pages.

Hamid’s pages are first. A photo, crinkled on the edges, is slotted in carefully: it shows Hamid in a bright suit, hands in the air, conducting a collection of colored sparks. He is grinning, and Azu is laughing in the background.

The pages themselves are covered in scrawled anecdotes: they tell of conversations over shared meals, of long nights spent gossiping in flickering candlelight, of Hamid’s failed attempt to teach him to sew. Wilde still has the lopsided shirt he’d stitched, tucked away into the safety of a wardrobe, untouched for years.

Sasha’s pages are next. There are no pictures‒Wilde knows she’d rather it be that way. He doesn’t want to forget, though, and the margins are full of vague descriptions: allusions to oil, to ball bearings, to melting shadows. Sasha was formed of dark, flowing water, and he makes sure she is remembered that way. She was so much _more_ than that, though, so much _more_ than her skills. Clever, and strong, and so painfully endearing.

A copy of her letter is tucked between the pages. Wilde hopes she knew how loved she was.

The ink on Zolf’s pages have been so smeared with tears that the words are no longer legible. There was once a single photo pressed into the journal’s spine, of Zolf elbow-deep in dough. It now resides, folded among familiar creases, in a locket Wilde refuses to take off.

He never managed to get a picture of Grizzop. Most of the pages in his memory are drafts of a letter, thanking him, never to be sent. Wilde has recalled, in the space around the earnest words, how protective Grizzop was of his friends, how to-the-point and fierce he could be. He had never met anyone more true to themselves.

Though he hadn’t known Azu well, more of the journal is dedicated to her than to anyone else. She hadn’t lived long, no, but she’d touched more souls than even those who’d been alive for hundreds of years. All Wilde had needed to do was contact the Cult of Aphrodite once the world was functional once more and just like that, he had all the stories he’d ever need to remember her. He learned of the village she’d grown up in‒its culture, its traditions. He read how she volunteered to run community events, how she had helped her fellow trainees with their studies in seminary, how she built her life around helping others. She had lived to bring people together, and she had died to keep them that way.

Wilde isn’t actually sure Cel died‒but he knows they aren’t alive, at least not as themselves. He’d last seen them fleeing into the ruins of the city, twisted and grotesque both in body and in mind, Barnes’s blood splattered across their pointed face, and though he’d searched for hours on end, he’d never been able to find them.

Their pages are closed as though they’d died. There is a finality to the words that would suggest to an observer that they’d been penned in their entirety after Cel’s disappearance‒and they wouldn’t be wrong. It wasn’t that way because Wilde hadn’t cared, though; he simply hadn’t had the time.

Most of the writing tells of Cel teaching him various alchemical techniques. Wilde can see his own transformation, in the curling ink, from completely clueless to able to brew a wide variety of simple potions in a matter of weeks. It was the closest to magic he’d felt in nearly two years, and he knew he’d never be able to repay Cel for that act of kindness.

He still knows how to brew them, but he hasn’t in years.

The journal sits, and it collects dust.


End file.
